


On Solid Ground

by lulabo



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: bubbleficathon, Community: truthsome_fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-14
Updated: 2006-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulabo/pseuds/lulabo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal and Inara find themselves alone. Banged and bruised, they try to make nice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Solid Ground

**Author's Note:**

> An old story (2006 or so).

The bottles and their stoppers clink faintly, and the sound echoes in the chill silence of her room. They are wrapped in tissue, and the paper rustles as she lifts the box from her trunk.

For a moment, she trails her fingertips along the rows of small globes, remembering. Here, lavender, and here, jasmine; this is sandalwood, this lilies-of-the-valley. Among the florals are musks, spices, perfumes that smell of tea and earth. Her eyes closed, she lets her fingers wander among the scents like a blind woman reading by touch, but she’s memorized the text and knows exactly what she wants.

It’s a tiny vial—they are all tiny vials, now more precious than ever. On an outer planet, the wife of a land baron would pay better than good money for this collection. _Serenity_ could live for two months on these. She would sell them, if asked, but no one will ask.

Inara sets the water to heat, shivering in Kaylee’s old tee shirt. She rises unsteadily to her feet; she imagines this is what it feels to be arthritic and brittle, this creaking sensation, this bone weariness. The room tips, the walls open wide and unfurl into blackness before they recede and grow close once more. If she waits, they’ll return to their proper places, and the floor will swing back up beneath her feet. She stands, flexing her toes against the cold of that same floor, and waits.

Before he left, Simon had told her she would be dizzy some time; she remembers this with a self-chastising sigh, remembers her conviction the sickening spinning would subside with the pain in her head. She hadn’t expected either to last so long. If she’d believed him, she’d have taken the pills he offered, she thinks. She raises a tentative hand to her forehead, probing the bruise, and corrects herself: if she’d been listening, she’d have taken the pills. If someone hadn’t been hurt worse than she, she’d have been listening.

A stick of incense in her pocket, Inara climbs unsteadily out of her bunk. Not for the first time, she wonders a moment if her life wouldn’t be easier if she were back in her shuttle, not occupying an empty, spare bunk. She decides to test herself and go the long way ‘round by the galley and bridge of _Serenity_ Hands out, she walks heel to toe, pressing every inch of the bare skin of her feet to the well-greased floor, her fingertips just skimming the walls. She’s had less trouble keeping her balance in flight, in the black, than she is today, grounded as they are.

It’s unsettling, wandering _Serenity_ at her emptiest, her most silent. She’s been in port five days, with five more before the crew return from furlough. A faint breeze has been whining through the hold since they landed. Inara pauses, lets the cool air slide over the back of her neck. Since the accident, she’s worn her hair in a loose mess of curls at the crown of her head—it ached before, and the dull weight of her hair makes no difference in the intensity of the pain, though the slightest brush of hair against her bruised face stung, made her wince. Her skin has always been sensitive.

She doesn’t bother knocking: he’ll only deny her entrance. Instead, she kicks the ladder in and descends slowly, carefully, first one foot on a rung then the other, lowering herself like a child. Before she turns to face him, Mal groans.

“Let me alone.”

Inara makes no answer. It takes a moment to locate among his things a suitable holder for the slim column of incense, longer because of the movement of the still ship around her.

“What’re you doin’ down here?” he demands. She begins to rifle in his bureau for a match. “’f I could get up, I’d—”

“Hush,” she says. “You’d do nothing.”

“Hell I wouldn’t,” he mutters. He doesn’t move.

The video capture in his drawer is paused on her face, set in a rueful smile, a look of fond annoyance and some vague sort of reluctance. She wonders how he got this picture. How he found it, where, and when. If Kaylee left it. If she did.

Mal snorts, and she drops the capture, her reverie spent. He’s restless on his bed behind her as if to prove them both wrong. “Bù yào,” she commands. “Just tell me where there’s a match.”

He complies, his forehead wrinkled in bewilderment. He asks again what she wants, what she’s doing.

“Lighting incense,” she tells him, gestures broadly.

“Can see _that,_ ” Mal says. “Whyfor down here? In _my_ bunk?”

With deliberate care, she turns herself to look at him for the first time. His hair is mussed and greasy, his skin shining with a sick yellow pallor. He’s bare to the waist, dressed in a faded pair of stained pants, cut and fraying at the knee. His blankets have been kicked aside, his one pillow bunched and shoved behind the small of his back where he sits—just leans, not resting, really, but waiting—his legs splayed out in front of him and his shoulders curved against the wall.

“You look terrible.”

The words are out before she’s thought, but it’s her tone that surprises Inara, the accusatory, unsympathetic edge.

His expression sours further. “I ask you down here?”

Inara looks away, focuses on the smoke curling upward from the lit incense. “No.”

“So you just come bargin’ in whenever you feel like, no matter what I tol—”

The irony tickles her throat. “Now, Captain, when has that ever stopped you?” She raises her chin, lifts her eyes to his with some concentration.

His gaze lingers on the mottled hues of purple on her cheek, her swollen eye. “I ain’t looking for company.”

“Of that I am well aware,” she tells him.

“Yet here you are,” he marvels.

She smiles, but painfully. “Here I am.”

Mal raises his arm to scratch his head, and, wincing, seems to think the better of it. “Because?”

“It’s been nearly a week, Mal. You’ve been down here nearly a week.”

“Your point bein’?”

“Mal.”

He exhales through his nose, a sure sign that his temper is short. “How come you sayin’ my name like that always sounds like a scoldin’?” He pauses. “And what in the stink kinda incense is that? Smells like—”

“It smells like pine, is what it smells like, _Captain._ ” She bites the word, and he flinches. “I came down to make you get up and air out. It’s positively rank down here, and if you don’t get up and take care of yourself, you’re going to grow mold, and—” She barrels on, though he’s opened his mouth to protest. “—while you can sit down here and rot, for all I care, I doubt you care very much either, and that worries me. Be a man and get out of your gorram bed, Mal.”

He blinks and stares at her a moment as she stands there, her hands on her hips, frowning at him. His laughter rumbles the whole cabin. “Did you just say _‘gorram’_?” he asks, gasping.

“Oh, ài fǔ ài dài shèng pì huà,” she sighs.

“I’m sorry, but you bust in here in your Kaylee costume and start swearing at me… I think that’s a little funny.”

“I can curse just as well as you,” she tells him. “And it’s not a costume. Kaylee gave me these to wear.”

He sighs. “Look, if you came down here to cheer me out of my sulk, you needn’t ‘ve. I ain’t sulking.”

“Did I say—”

“You said I’m rotting. Ain’t no different.”

“Mal, would you just—”

“I just ain’t feelin’ inclined to get out of my—what’d you call it again?”

“Your gorram bed,” she mutters.

“That’s right, my _gorram bed_.”

“Honestly, Mal,” she says, and she shakes her head. The room pitches and rolls, suddenly, and she stumbles with it, pressing one palm to her temple as the room slides sideways, out from under her feet. “Oh.”

His arms are around her fast and tight, stilling the room, steadying her, his hand cradling her head as he catches her fall. She can feel the floor again beneath her feet, the cold burning her toes, but she’s less certain of her legs, of her arms, or if she can hold herself upright, and so she just leans on Mal, her tender cheek in the hollow of his shoulder, his skin as cold the floor beneath her feet.

And she can hear him hushing her, soothing her with wordless, humming sounds. “Whoa, there,” he sighs. She grips the backs of his arms, tries to find her voice. “What was that?” he asks.

Inara pulls back and her hands tighten convulsively on his arms to steady her. She tips her chin to look at him, her head still close to his shoulder. As she speaks, her lips brush his jaw; the scrape of his new beard is a surprise to her skin, feels like pressing her fingertip into a bowl of sugar, grainy and soft. “I’m just lightheaded,” she says. She steps back, her eyes lowered. “It’s fine. Měi hǎo.”

“Měi hǎo?” he repeats. She smiles, just slightly, in answer. His hands are heavy on her hips. “’f I get out of my _gorram bed,_ you gonna make me get off the gorram boat, too?”

“No,” she tells him. “Just take a bath.” He wrinkles his brow, ready to protest. “I already have it all set up. I’ll even wash your hair.”

She thinks he pales, slightly. His arms fall to his sides. “You’ll—”

“If you can’t reach up,” she says. “With your ribs…”

The air is full of strange silence, of white noise. She can hear Mal breathing, hear her own breath, hear the incense as it burns down, as the ashes fall and the smoke rises. She can hear the blood in her ears and the way it makes the room move with her heartbeat.

“You go first,” he says. “Up the ladder. You gonna need help—”

She nearly laughs. “I hardly think—” And he raises his eyebrows, daring her to continue. “I can manage on my own,” she says. “Though I appreciate the offer.”

Mal waits at the bottom of the ladder as she ascends. Though she’s still dizzy, it’s easy until she has to step over the threshold and draw herself up to her full height; she lets herself stumble to lean on the opposite wall. The ship is a pendulum with a wide, violent arc, and seeing Mal emerge from his bunk and stand across from her to swing in concert with it is nearly too much. She can feel the bile rising in her throat.

“Inara?”

She exhales slowly. “It’s fine,” she says again. “Just follow me to my shut—to my room.”

Mal silently offers her his arm. Her chest swells slightly, and she hates him in equal parts for doing so and because the gesture is so welcome. She links her arm in his and they lean on each other as they walk. “You ain’t gonna put curls in my hair, right?”

“Not unless you’d like me to,” she tells him. She can feel goosebumps rising along his arms in the cool corridor and covers his wrist with her hand. “How are you feeling?”

“Mending just fine,” he says shortly. “You want to go down the ladder first—”

“I think that’s best,” she tells him, and he drops her arm as they arrive. She turns and begins her careful descent. “You’re still sore?” she asks. “Simon said—”

“Stop talking ‘fore you fall off that thing and hit your head again. You’ll get all diān dǎo,” he hollers.

Both feet firmly on the ground, she takes stock of the small room once more. She can see every item just as she left it. “I’m not going to hit my head. If you’d like to, feel free. You might stop being so quarrelsome.”

“Way I understand it,” he calls, setting himself atop the ladder, “hitting your head only bumps your brains about a little, it don’t scramble ‘em up altogether.”

“Shame,” she sighs. She kneels by the tub and dips the heel of her hand into the water to test it. As Mal steps from the last ladder rung, she takes the vial she’s chosen and lifts the stopper, tips the bath oil into the water. “There’s a towel on the bed,” she tells him. “Undress and put it on.”

She can hear the indignation in his short gasp before he even takes the tone he does when he speaks. “You think I’m getting nekkid—”

“Just cover up whatever embarrasses you,” she tells him, throwing an arch glance over her shoulder. “I assure you, it’s not as though you have something I haven’t seen before.”

He gapes at her. “What makes you think I’d be embarrassed?” he asks. His eyes narrow. “It’s not like guessin’ someone’s height—I mean, you can’t—”

“Mal,” she chides. “You’re going to bathe. I presume you don’t do that with your clothes on. Although, judging from what I’ve seen in the past…” She trails off. “Put the towel on, I’ll help you with whatever you can’t reach. You get the rest.”

She busies herself with finding the right sort of soap for his hair and laying out rags and sponges and oils while he undresses, muttering to himself. Helping Mal bathe is not something that will happen by rote, she knows; that she would is not something she could have predicted, nor is it likely to happen again. But she’s bumped her head quite badly recently, and her face is bruised, and his entire torso is knotted in pain, and they are alone together on _Serenity,_ and she knows he feels he can’t say no.

Mal clears his throat, and without looking up from the row of notions she’s laid out, Inara points to the small pile of cushions before her. “Sit,” she tells him. He complies, groaning, and she places her hands lightly on his shoulders. “I need you to lean back.”

“You what?” he asks. His voice is throaty and odd. She presses the tops of his shoulders more firmly in response.

“Lay back,” she says, her voice less even to her ears than she’d hoped. She explains there’s a basin of water in her lap and she’ll use it to wash his hair but she needs him to lean back and settle his shoulders against her knees, and if he would just stop being such an infant they could get him cleaned up and maybe he would feel better.

He is sullen when he speaks. “Not an infant.”

“Whatever you say, Captain.”

He grunts as he leans back, and she helps him find the indent in the basin where his neck should rest, guiding him gently with her hand. She supports his head with one hand and cups water in the other, spilling it over his scalp until his hair is soaked. Inara can see Mal’s eyes are open, but he can’t seem to find a point to focus on, can’t settle on where he should look, and so his gaze darts about the room.

“Has no one ever washed your hair before?” she asks. He only looks at her in reply. “I’ve always found it rather relaxing,” she tells him. “Close your eyes.” He fidgets, and she runs her hand through his hair, scraping her fingernails lightly against his scalp. “Mal,” she says softly, “ming.”

She pours a puddle of shampoo into one hand and warms it between her palms, making it foam and turn sudsy. She starts at the nape of Mal’s neck, rubbing the soap into his hair and sweeping her fingers upward, covering every inch of hair with lather before she begins gently to massage his scalp. She works from the bottom up, scratching at the hair behind his ears, at the short sideburns, at the hair along his forehead. She tickles the crown of his head, presses the length of her fingers against the flat back of his head, skims her nails up and down and up and down. She can see his toes wiggle, see him fidget his hips just slightly.

“You have a good thick head of hair, Mal,” she says. “It’s quite soft.”

His answer is a soft “mm” of assent.

As she rinses the shampoo from his hair, she again supports his head with one hand, still lightly rubbing the nape of his neck with her fingertips all the while, stroking the fine skin beneath his hair. After a moment or two, his hair begins to squeak beneath her fingers, and she slides her hand from his neck to the space between his shoulders, urging him wordlessly to sit up. He complies and, as if he knows what she’ll say, curls forward over his knees and offers up his back to her.

The water from his hair drips and tracks down Mal’s neck and shoulders, wobbling a slow course along his spine. Inara chooses a sponge from her small collection and submerges it in the tub, wringing it beneath the surface a few times before she draws it out, soaking and shedding water. She begins once again at the base of his neck, curling the sponge in her hand. She sweeps it across the bare span of his shoulders; her free hand slides up his side, as though of its own accord, and begins to work at the tight, twined muscles of his shoulders, loosening years of knotted pain and tension beneath his skin. The oil in the water makes his skin more pliant, fills the room with the sweet, nearly heady scent of wild sandgrass. Inara pushes hard with the flat of her palm against Mal’s shoulder blade and he sinks further forward as though she’s found the muscle that keeps him upright and solid and he’s suddenly become boneless and vulnerable under her hands. She continues to wash his back with one hand, work at his tired muscles with the other, going back when she needs to for more water, more oil, with one hand always against his skin.

When she reaches his waist and the towel loosely pooled at his hips, she wets a new sponge and begins again at his right shoulder, reaching around him for his arm. She leans forward, pressing her chest to his back, and takes his hand in hers to extend his arm. This new contact seems to startle him, and she can feel him begin to retract, to curl into himself, away from her, to tighten all she’s undone. She slides her free hand along his spine and presses her fingertips at the small of his back, whispering in his ear for him to relax, just relax. And because he’s tired, or sore, she thinks, or because her hands are warm and the water is hot and the room smells floral and earthy and sweet and because it’s been so long since he’s treated his body with anything like care that he can’t help but give in, he softens just enough, and she begins again.

She washes his arms to the tips of his fingers, washes the crease in his elbows and the lines of his palms, washes the places where his shoulders and arms and neck meet, reaches around him and washes his collarbone and the dip between his bones. Again she guides him without speaking, lays him back and washes his sides, underarm to hipbone, washes his broad shoulders and chest, his stomach, his abdomen. She works her fingers carefully along his sternum, over the muscles of his chest and belly, probes cautiously at his ribs and hips and the soft, killing spot just there above where he wears his guns and weapons. She pauses for a clean cloth, for a fresh basin so that she may bathe his legs and feet, and he sighs with his arms splayed out wide and his eyes still closed.

“Did it hurt?” she asks softly. “Your ribs. I know they’re healing, I tried to be—”

“Pain felt good,” he mutters. “Not so banged up as you seem to think, anyway.”

“Simon said—”

And at this, Mal lifts his head to look at her in consternation. “What the hell’s the doc doing—”

Inara picks up his right foot and holds it in her lap, working at the pads of his toes with the washcloth. “I asked him.”

“And he _told_ you?”

“So?” she asks, busying herself with the tendons in his ankle, with the protruding bone above his heel.

“Inara.” He waits. _“Inara.”_ She stops. “You know you was out cold for three whole days, right? You know how bad you knocked your head? What kinda fall you took in that mule?”

She rubs her hand along the curve of his calf without thinking. “I know. But I also know that you punctured a lung and broke—”

“I weren’t out cold for three days, unconscious in the gorram sick bay because I went head over tea-ass from a mule someone else crashed tryin’ to avoid Alliance patrol—”

“Mal—”

“Anyone in this room gets to lie and say they’re fine, it’s me,” he says. “I shouldn’t even—I shouldn’t even let you be—”

Inara presses her thumb to the arch of his foot, finds just the spot that will make his head drop to the pillow and his back arch just so. “We were both hurt, Mal, no one’s at fault for that,” she says. “I just need to be up and around again, let this all run its course. As do you. Sending everyone out on furlough like you did won’t make either one of us better faster, it only gives you license to mope.” She twists his foot in her hands, working at the skin along the top. “It’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into, going to meet that fence with you. And if you hadn’t sped, we would have been caught, and we’d be back on that planet in Alliance handcuffs instead of recuperating wherever it is we are now. And it’s not as though right now you’re letting me do anything, as if you’re doing me some sort of favor. Maybe I’m just—I thought you could use a little hygienic instruction.”

Mal keeps his silence as she works her way up to his knee and just above, though he flinches slightly as she reaches the bottom hem of the towel. Without comment or pause, she switches sides and begins again on his left thigh, wringing out the sponge over his knee and sweeping up.

“Why did you come on that meeting?” Mal asks, his voice rough.

Startled, she pauses, her fingers in the crease behind his knee, her other hand hovering over his thigh. “I knew the fence,” she tells him. “He was a client. You know that. I thought I could make the sale more… lucrative.”

“I mean, why you still here? What’re you doing on this boat?” he asks.

She drops her hands. “Is there an answer that I can give that’ll satisfy that question, Captain?” she asks.

“Don’t call—” he begins, and he sits up slightly, props himself up on his elbows. “You haven’t said a word ‘bout going back, ‘bout any plans you got,” he says. “Where’d you even get this stuff?”

“Please don’t start, Mal,” she breathes. “I don’t want to argue about the ethics of what I do, I don’t want to—”

“Who said anything ‘bout ethics?” he demands. “It’s been months, and you ain’t said boo about renting your shuttle again, ‘bout what you’re plannin’ on doin’, and I—”

She rises, listing sideways as she gets to her feet and fumbles towards the ladder. She grips the nearest rung for support and breathes. “I don’t know what to do,” she says, at length. “I can’t stay here and go back to renting the shuttle and entertaining clients the way it was. I can’t stay here and have it be the same. I can’t stay and do that. Not if…” Wearily, she reaches back and loosens her hair from its knot, rakes her hand through her curls as they fall about her shoulders and rain stinging kisses on her cheek. “And I don’t know if I can go back.”

He’s risen without her knowing, and his arm is suddenly around her waist, firm and right, anchors her and the room begins to slow and settle. “That’s why you had to go to that meet with me as bad as you did,” he says. “And I ended up ramming the mule into the bay doors and conking you out three days cold.”

The ladder rung is cool comfort against her throbbing forehead as she rests against it, leaning into Mal’s arm, away from his body. “You didn’t have to do that last part,” she tells him, laughing.

“You can have the shuttle, ‘f you want,” he says.

She lifts her head, rests her chin on her shoulder and speaks softly back at him. “I won’t do it that way, Mal.”

He sighs, and she can feel his breath on her shoulder, stirring her hair. His movements cautious and gentle, he turns Inara in his arms to face him. She studies him as his eyes rove her face, his own set in an expression of near consternation, of hard thoughtfulness. He lifts a lock of hair from her eyes, his finger hovering over the bruises healing on her cheek, beneath her eye. “Can’t have you doin’ crime,” he says. “Not if you’re gonna bust your head ev’ry time…” He trails off. “Can’t have that.”

The room again begins to spin, but Mal is resolute, still and solid before her, holding her fast. “I don’t know what to do,” she tells him. “I want to—I want to stay, I’m just—I’m not sure how.”

Mal, for the first time since she woke him, dips his head and looks her in the eye. His arms are clean and dry beneath her hands, his chest still slightly damp; his hair is drying in strange, slanted cowlicks and curls, standing up where it should lie flat, and his skin is no longer tinged with yellow but ruddy. Beneath the scent of the perfumed oil, she can still smell the ineffable scent that belongs only to Mal, and under the week’s worth of stubble and the hollow rings under his eyes, she can see the wry, earnest face he has that he only wears behind closed doors, when _Serenity_ is shuttered against strangers and aliens and holds only family. His skin is taut beneath her hands; she can feel the pulse of his heartbeat, the shallow rhythm of his breathing, the slight quaver of his bones as he holds her so tight. And she can feel her own skin flushed and tight and tingling, feel her nerves from the tips of her ears to the soles of her feet, dirty and slick from walking barefoot along the corridors; she can see her inverted reflection in Mal’s eyes, upside down and tilted as he tips his head and regards her, his lips just twitching in a smile.

“We could figure that out, I should think,” he says. His voice rattles in his throat, gruff, and shakes them both.

She bites her lips together, wills back the hot rush of tears she can feel behind her eyes. “Mal,” she says, her tone a warning. “This is serious.”

“Oh, I know,” he says, though he sounds anything but. The teasing edge in his voice sets fire along her spine, her fingers. “I’m ‘ware of the seriousness. I’m saying: we could think on it. We’ll find a way.”

“We’ll argue,” she tells him. “We’ll just argue. A lot.”

“I ‘spect we will,” he says. “But I’ll be willin’ to forgive and forget, long as you keep washin’ my hair like that, ‘cause, oh, Lordy—”

She pushes at his shoulders, mortified. _“You’ll_ forgive and forget!” she cries. “Mal Reynolds, I think you’re about as mixed up as—”

And he’s kissing her, taking her breath, and the words are gone as he holds her up, pulls her more tightly to him with his hand caught in her hair, and he’s softer than she’s thought he could be, not rigid or forceful but sweet and fierce, and she feels as though he’s begging her to answer a challenge, to draw him in and find his footing for him even as he keeps her from losing her balance and falling, and she loops her arms around his neck, hangs on him on tiptoe as she leans up to him, lets his beard scratch her face and sear her skin, and he’s warm and rough and too many things and her head is swimming, her feet have left the floor, and she’s reeling, reeling.

Mal stumbles against the bed, his arms still twined about her as he steadies them. He laughs, “You ‘bout knocked me over.”

“One good turn,” she says. She pulls back as far as he’ll let her, draws one finger along her lower lip. “I am serious, you know. This isn’t—it’s not going to be easy. You’re, you know, _you,_ and I’m—”

“You, too,” he says. “You want to stay?”

She looks at him levelly. “I do.”

“Then stay. It can be that easy.”

“Can it?”

Again, he lifts her hair from her face, smoothing his hand along her neck. He’s careful of her bruises, regretful. “Prob’ly not. Might be a start.”

She leans forward, just presses her lips to his. “I need to do your other foot,” she says.

“What?” he asks, staring.

“Your foot, I need to wash your foot,” she says. “I’m not done with you yet.” She points. “Lay down.”

He moves to sit, pauses. “Should I lose the towel?”

“Just sit down, Mal.”

He settles back among the pillows and watches her, almost indulgently, as she searches for a new washcloth, as the other’s gone cold. “Hey, I got an idea.”

Inara concentrates on his instep, on the hard soles of his feet. “Yes?”

“When you’re done? I’ll do you.” He smiles hugely at her.

“I don’t know if you’re ready for that, Captain,” she tells him.

“Just Mal,” he says. “I think I am.”

She smiles, and though the room wavers around her, she leans forward. His hands find her waist and hold her steady as she falls into his kiss.

\-- Bù yào (don’t)  
\-- ài fǔ ài dài shèng pì huà (For the love of all things holy and shit.)  
\-- Měi hǎo (Fine.)  
\-- diān dǎo (crazy and deranged)  
\-- Ming (close your eyes)


End file.
